Saturday, September 8, 2012

Bill Maher Outclassed and Outmatched by Dinesh D'Souza

A week ago, Dinesh D'Souza met Bill
Maher on his home turf of “Real Time with Bill Maher” for a debate.
Apparently,
Bill Maher hasn't shared much talk time with Dinesh D'Souza in the last ten
years, and given the outcome of this interview, it's not hard to imagine why. By
no small measure, D’Souza destroys Maher in terms of substance and class.

Of
course, Maher is a little too smug to realize that he looks as foolish as he
does. Emboldened by his audience's loud encouragement that can only be likened
to the zeal of a blind religious following, he never loses that trademark
"I'm the smartest guy on the planet" look of self-satisfaction.

Maher’s
problems occur when his comments are appraised by someone unencumbered by a
zealot's devotion to the idea that Maher is as smart as he thinks he is.
Because when viewed through a more logical lens, it becomes clear that he is
fabulously wrong in nearly everything he says.

This
article on
the website Reading the Score points
out much of this, including:

It really is a marvel to witness. Every time D’Souza was
allowed to speak he completely refuted Maher’s points. D’Souza didn’t seem even
slightly threatened by Maher’s trite
points.

Maher makes several embarrassing comments when he was trying
to refute D’Souza’s points, such as “the whole thing was a republican plan”
referring to the health care bill. This is a comment that would get him laughed
out of the room with even a moderate audience. And when D’Souza makes points
that any rational audience would see as fair, Maher can just dismiss it by
insulting D’Souza, and his audience will back him up.

Throughout the interview, Maher
makes it clear that ideology drives his thought process, not facts. Among many
other falsehoods Maher cites as evidence for his beliefs, the most glaring is
perhaps seen when he defends Barack Obama's stimulus efforts that have yielded
what is, in the most positive way of describing it, and extremely flaccid
economic recovery.

Maher suggests that resorting to taxpayer-funded stimulus to combat economic recessions is just natural-
as if Obama didn't have any other choice but to seek tax increases and massive
spending on social programs.This is, of
course, the great Keynesian
lie that the left hopes can be uttered often enough to make it truth.However, it is unequivocally false, and to
believe it requires an insane disregard for historical evidence.

Ronald Reagan inherited Jimmy Carter's
horrible economy and “chronic deficits,” and yet he reacted
with the Economic Recovery Tax Act, signed into law his first year in office,
which was “the largest tax cut in American history.”And the tax cut was indiscriminate- 25%
across the board.The result is either
something unknown to Maher, or something he just ignores.Tax revenues increased under Reagan from an
annual $599 billion to $1 trillion. After the bulk of the tax cuts were
implemented in 1983, there were significant spikes in GDP.By 1984, Reagan was able to explain to the
American people how his tax cuts had put Americans on the right track, and
America agreed.Inversely, Obama’s
speech at the DNC did
not mention the words stimulus, ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act- not
even once.While stumping for his second term, Reagan
was able to convey that “the best “stimulus” relies on the tried-and-true
American way: Letting free individuals stimulate the economy through their
earnings and activity.”Why then, is Obama
finding it so difficult to reference how his platform of tax hikes and
taxpayer-funded stimulus is the right path for America?

Because there is no proof in the
pudding, and because that is not the “tried-and-true” American way- it is the
way of Euro-socialism that we are currently watching collapse under the weight
of the concept of an entitlement state.

Given time, and given D’Souza’s
intimate acquaintance with Ronald Reagan’s presidency, I imagine he could have
enlightened Maher of these facts.But instead,
Maher quickly changed the subject and resorted to childish attacks.He brings up a scenario from years ago that
has apparently been festering, when D’Souza shared time on a panel with
Maher.D’Souza made comment on September
17th, 2001, that the terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks were
not cowards.Maher agreed, and added
that we, Americans, are the cowards for lobbing missiles from thousands of
miles away.Maher rightfully received
backlash from our military and patriotic Americans everywhere and was fired
from ABC, but he was a little miffed that D’Souza didn’t shoulder some of the
responsibility for the comment.D’Souza
simply reminds him that he said that the terrorists
were not cowards, but he never said that the American military were cowards.Maher cannot grasp that distinction, and in his confusion, he says that
D’Souza escaped the media’s ire at the time because he was a nobody, and Bill
Maher was somebody.

This display of elitism is a
wonderful conclusion to the interview.Here,
a comedian who fancies himself a great political thinker is captured deriding a
Dartmouth alumnus, a proven intellectual, a bestselling author, and the mind
responsible for this year’s underdog political smash, 2016: Obama’s America.And maybe
that’s what Maher’s really miffed about. D’Souza’s film has already crushed
Maher’s own political documentary, Religulous,
and is already one
of the most successful political documentaries of all time, poised to
surpass even Al Gore’s popular documentary, An
Inconvenient Truth.

But if that is Maher’s beef, he’s
got a long list of grudges. For example, Kirk Cameron (who I’m sure Maher would
suggest is of lower cultural esteem) made a low-budget, widely panned Christian
film called Fireproof-
it also trounced Religulous at the
box office.Next time Maher wants to
flex his intellectual chops and impugn a fellow filmmaker for his more
successful film, perhaps he might do better to invite him on the show.

4 comments:

Dinesh D'Souza: "One of the themes we hear constantly is that the people who did this are cowards. Not true. Look at what they did. First of all, you have a whole bunch of guys who are willing to give their life. None of 'em backed out. All of them slammed themselves into pieces of concrete. These are warriors. And we have to realize that the principles of our way of life are in conflict with people in the world."Bill Maher: "Say what you want about it, it's not cowardly...YOU'RE RIGHT. We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away,That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly.

D'Souza was framing the idea of the terrorists (not being cowards) in the context that they are a formidable threat; and he used the word "warriors" not as a heroic label but in the negative - i.e belligerent, brutish.Maher was framing the idea of the terrorists (not being cowards) in the context that they were noble as compared to our "cowardly" military in which he applied the lable "

Dinesh tends to take a polite stance at debate and this leaves him open to brutish tactics. The son (Obama) wrote an entire book in which he connects with his father's ideologies...Dinesh didn't need to reach far at all. and the resistance to the idea of contemporary Colonialism is real, seeing as Maher mockingly asked "what colonialism, where are there colonies now?" etc. In fact, Obama mentions it on virtually every other page of his book as well...which was one of Dinesh's jumping off points in regards to the term. but Maher was too busy interrupting Dinesh's retorts, changing the subjects and hamming up to the biased crowd.

...oh, and, why on earth would Dinesh need to speak with Obama to gather facts? He spoke directly with early acquaintances, family, and close friends. Documentarians do this successfully all the time, even posthumously. and is it a stretch that a son might take on his "fathers" views or even ideological social vendettas? ...Isn't that what many liberals claimed that Bush Jr. was doing via the Iraq war? Maher has no credibility in any legitimate platform except for the crass liberal side show that is his arena. lol

and Lastly, Maher is the one who seemed to be reaching FAR up his ass by stating "I got booted off the air because I was famous..." and also a deep reach by denying that he referred to the US military as cowards in saying "My enemies said I was talking about the military but I wasn't because I said "We" and I have never been in the military"...what kind of crap is that?! lol

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